PARIS -- You can't have music without rests, and musicians without rests don't sound so great either, so after six straight nights of concerts, the members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra finally got a day off to set out on various quests.

The last of those consecutive nights came Wednesday in Luxembourg, where the audience was on its feet for the orchestra's and music director Riccardo Muti's second bow &mdash; and stayed there for bows three, four and five &mdash; following Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5.

Thursday morning began the down time, with orchestra members given the choice of remaining in Luxembourg for another day or traveling to Paris, where the next concert was scheduled for Friday night.

Most took the Thursday train to Paris.

So what do classical musicians do with free time while on tour in Europe?

The oboists went to visit the Paris-based F. Loree company, which has been making the instrument since 1881 and, CSO principal oboist Eugene Izotov said, is "in every possible way the most important maker in the world and certainly the most important maker in the history of American oboes."

In most cases the makers are as eager to meet with the CSO musicians as the musicians are to see the makers. Having members of one of the world's top orchestras use, endorse or at least try out their instruments is no small deal to what often are small, family-run businesses.

So Izotov talked to the Loree folks about making some adjustments to his instrument so it would play even better than it already does. "We're always looking for improvements with how technology can serve artistry," he said.

Fellow CSO oboist Lora Schaefer was there as well and left with an arrangement to have two new oboes shipped to her in Chicago so she can try them out on stage. "And he did some work on my current oboe, which had issues," she said.

New principal clarinetist Steve Williamson was scheduled Friday afternoon to do a photo shoot and appear in some video footage for a clarinet maker in town. "They're sort of announcing my new position," he said, though he was taking advantage of the visit to request some instrument tweaks as well. "I told them that I want some changes made to one of the clarinets I play. I want them to reconsider how they're making my instrument."

A German horn maker visited the CSO brass section in earlier in the tour in Salzburg so they could offer feedback on some of his instruments. John Hagstrom tried out some trumpets. Charles Vernon sampled the bass trombone, so he could make suggestions for the maker, who wishes to sell better instruments in Germany.

"I help them, but I always like mine the best,&rdquo; said Vernon, who plays a Selmer-Bach bass trombone made in Elkhart, Ind. Vernon and his wife, Alison, enjoyed the opportunity Friday for some Paris sightseeing, including a visit to the glorious stained-glass windows of the gothic Sainte-Chapelle cathedral.

Concertmaster Robert Chen also didn't have a particular mission Friday in Paris; or at any other point of the two-week tour; so he said he was going to take the advice of his wife and kids, who had been in Paris when he left for the tour.

"They said I should go to the zoo," he said.

Other orchestra members took off for the Eiffel Tower and various museums and churches while&nbsp;some musicians still could be heard practicing in their hotel rooms.

Meanwhile, some musicians could be heard practicing in their hotel rooms.

Musician missions were hardly confined to Paris. Acting principal timpanist Vadim Karpinos said that at the final tour stop in Vienna, he hopes to buy some Viennese timpani mallets. Other than that, he said, his main duty lay back in Lucerne, Switzerland, where he could "buy dark chocolate blackberry bark for my wife."

CSO librarian Carole Keller had a goal in Lucerne as well: to buy a high-end music box to add to her collection. But the raised prices and the poor dollar-euro exchange rate diverted her to look at watches.

Principal harp player Sarah Bullen may have boasted the loftiest quest of all.

"I'm seeking out the purest gut harp strings in the world," she said with a straight face before laughing. "Actually, I'm going to H&amp;M to shop for socks."

The sweet life of a CSO patron

Wednesday, August 31

LUXEMBOURG —The 30-plus patrons on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's European tour get to see a lot of things that regular tourists &mdash; and CSO musicians, for that matter &mdash; don't.

Let's start with the bee.

The setting: a beautiful home on a scenic hillside on the outskirts of Luxembourg on a gloriously sunny day. The house looks like a traditional European country home, but the inside is modern and open, and on the wraparound porch, which overlooks the rows of grapes that the chef/owner and her vintner partner make into some wonderfully balanced Rieslings and a Cremant (a sparkling wine), a gourmet, multi-course lunch is being served.

CSO trumpet player John Hagstrom is there; he played "Taps" earlier Wednesday morning in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial that proved to be surprisingly emotional for many of the patrons and guests present. Lea Linster, the buoyant, prominent Luxembourg chef who has prepared this feast in her home, is playfully flirting with Hagstrom, in part because she wants him to play a piece on his trumpet.

So she brings him the first serving of a perfect looking cr&egrave;me brulee &mdash; beautifully caramelized top, specks of vanilla in the buttery custard, you get the idea. And a bee is hovering around it and then lands on it and just stays there insouciantly.

"That should not be there," Linster states matter-of-factly and takes Hagstrom's dessert spoon and smushes the bee right into the cr&egrave;me brulee until it is moving no more. "It's dead, and I get you another," she says, referring to the dish, which she is taking away, and not the bee.

Most of the patrons agreed that for a bee, there are probably worse ways to go.

And, yes, Hagstrom got his replacement dessert, and Linster got her serenade, as the trumpeter played the George Gershwin song "For You, For Me, For Evermore" while the chef and her happily sated guests listened and swooned.

The patrons wound up having a pretty good day, starting with a lecture about The Battle of the Bulge; then the visit to the cemetery where more than 5,000 American soldiers who fought in that battle, including General George Patton, are buried; then the lunch, which pretty much covered anyone's need for dinner; then some down time, an optional museum tour and finally the CSO's second concert in the Philharmonie, with a visit to music director Riccardo Muti's dressing room afterward.

On Thursday the group flies to Dresden, skipping the CSO's stop in Paris so they can spend more time in a less familiar city where the orchestra, with its breakneck travel pace, will arrive for a single night on Saturday. All in all they will have been in five of the CSO's six tour cities, though usually staying in more luxurious hotels and sometimes taking scenic detours, including what many of them said was a spectacular ride through theSwiss Alps down the Glacier Express train while they were en route from Salzburg, Austria, to Lucerne, Switzerland.

So, yes, these folks are enjoying a pretty sweet vacation package, assembled by the Chicago-based travel company R. Crusoe &amp; Son and made available to anyone willing to pay their own airfare to and from Europe plus a fee for the package (which varies depending on, for instance, how many concerts will be attended), and at least an $1,800 donation to the CSO. But their travel is enjoyed in the context of boosting a cultural institution they love.

"It's a big joyous part of our own life," said Carol Hays, a longtime CSO governing board member traveling with her husband Andy. "We really love the music."

"For me it's about supporting the symphony and actually getting to meet the players," said Mary Ann Tittle, chairman of the Dune Acres Historical Commission and a CSO governing board member since 1994; she's traveling with her investor husband Ray. "They're our rock stars. It's just a thrill to hear them and to see the European audiences appreciate them."

"We are on this trip because we had not been to any of the cities we are visiting &mdash; to experience different halls, get a feel for the different cities," said Jim Mabie, a principal at the financial advisement firm William Blair &amp; Company and member of many culture-related boards in town; he's traveling with his wife, Kay, a CSO League member. "And you get to have a bit of a relationship with the orchestra members, and that provides more insight into the organization that you otherwise wouldn't have."

He hopes such excursions are good for Chicago as well.

"It's our effort to make a contribution to the cultural life of the city, which is a big part of what makes the city attractive," he said. "Certainly the CSO, Lyric, along with two or three of the theaters, are the leading institutions in town culturally."

These patrons, in case you haven't figured this out already, tend to be well established in Chicago society and business and active with the CSO. Three are former CSO board chairmen, including John Richman, who used to be Kraft Food's chairman and CEO; Dick Thomas, former president, chairman and CEO of First Chicago Bank; and Bill Jentes, a retired senior partner at the law firm Kirkland &amp; Ellis.

These are people the CSO wants to keep involved.

"These tours have proven to be an effective way of making the patrons feel that much more connected to their orchestra," said Jennifer Moran, the CSO's director of planned giving and governing members.

"This gives another setting for encountering people over breakfast, having shared experiences that are beyond the formal audience-orchestra relationship," CSO Association President Deborah Rutter said. "It builds a bond."

Thomas, a veteran of many CSO tours, said he thinks it's also beneficial for the orchestra to have such a group to take these trips and then return to their Chicago friends with tales of how the CSO triumphed.

"We're ambassadors for the orchestra," said Phyllis Bleck, a surgeon and CSO Governing Member.

The musicians appreciate the patrons' efforts as well.

"They're supportive on many fronts," Hagstrom said. "Everyone is very grateful for the generosity of spirit, the sense of dedication. These people take an ownership of the various levels of what it takes to make an orchestra function like this."

"It's always good to have somebody on the other side of the stage cheering you on," Concertmaster Robert Chen said backstage after Wednesday's concert. He compared the effect to Cubs fans who make themselves heard in opposing teams' ballparks.

Wednesday's concert, which featured Richard Strauss's "Death and Transfiguration" and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5, had the patrons beaming afterward. "This is the best I think I've heard on this trip," said Andy Hays, who was the Tribune Company's vice president of corporate affairs up to 1995.

That good mood carried into Muti's dressing room as clusters of patrons filed in, chatted with the maestro and posted for pictures.

"They are very enthusiastic about the music and the orchestra," Muti said after the patrons had left. "They are very proud. And they <em>should</em> be proud."

Muti gives killer glare, musicians swap notes

Tuesday, Aug. 30

LUXEMBOURG &mdash; I was about to climb aboard my connecting train in Basel, Switzerland, en route from Lucerne to Luxembourg on Tuesday when a woman from the railway informed me that the car I was entering was pretty full, so I might want to consider another one.

&ldquo;But my reserved seat is on this one,&rdquo; I said.

She shook her head as if to say, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry.&rdquo;

So on board I went, and there they were: the patrons.

OK, this is a pretty unruly bunch, at least if you count telling bad jokes as unruly, but they also represent a cross-section of Chicago&rsquo;s highest-end establishment, with three former Chicago Symphony Orchestra chairmen and people who have run banks, investment firms and Kraft Foods among them. Plus, their parallel travels with the CSO&rsquo;s two-week European tour is first class all the way, so I figured I could do worse than be their accidental appendage.

What&rsquo;s more, they shared their wine.

But this piece is not about the patrons, though I keep saying I&rsquo;ll get to them. (Maybe after tomorrow when I accompany them to a ceremony at the cemetery commemorating American soldiers lost in the Battle of the Bulge.) Let&rsquo;s wrap up some unfinished from Lucerne first.

The orchestra rehearsed Monday morning in Lucerne&rsquo;s modern concert hall where the festival concerts take place &mdash; it&rsquo;s generally referred to by its initials, KKL, and I&rsquo;ll leave it at that. The first CSO concert there actually was Sunday night, the day they arrived from Salzburg, so music director Riccardo Muti and the musicians had to adjust on the fly to the contrasting acoustics between this tall, shoebox-shaped auditorium and Salzburg&rsquo;s fan-shaped Grosses Festspielhaus. (I&rsquo;ll also soon be writing more about different halls&rsquo; acoustics, from the musicians&rsquo; and audiences&rsquo; points of view.)

Monday&rsquo;s rehearsal was supposed to run through Richard Strauss&rsquo;s &ldquo;Aus Italien,&rdquo; which was having its only performance on this tour that night in Lucerne, and then a couple of short Verdi pieces being prepared as encores. But when musicians arrived, they found a curve ball in the schedule: Instead of the Verdi, they&rsquo;d be rehearsing a piece that many (if not most) of them didn&rsquo;t know: Giuseppe Martucci&rsquo;s &ldquo;Nocturne, Op. 70, No. 1.&rdquo;

Muti explained to the musicians and guests from the sister-city program between Lucerne and Chicago that Martucci was a superlative composer, conductor and pianist of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries whose work became overshadowed in part because Italian music at the time was dominated by opera from composers such as Puccini.

Muti said Mahler&rsquo;s final program as a conductor included a Martucci piece, and in the early 1930s famed conductor Arturuo Toscanini was supposed to conduct a memorial concert for him in Bologna, but Italian fascists demanded that he perform the fascist anthem at the beginning, Toscanini refused repeatedly and wound up being intercepted by thugs at the auditorium&rsquo;s doors and beaten, fleeing the country soon after. The concert, Muti said, never happened.

The softly flowing, string-driven nocturne was about 10 minutes long, and Muti ran the orchestra through it a couple of times, with a few suggestions. You (or at least I) would never have known the musicians hadn&rsquo;t been playing this for years. That&rsquo;s what makes &rsquo;em pros.

The concert that evening had a similarly triumphant feel to those that preceded it. The Hindemith Symphony in E-flat was energetically performed and received, and &ldquo;Aus Italien,&rdquo; the then-young German composer&rsquo;s tribute to the conductor&rsquo;s native country, as performed in Switzerland by an American orchestra, offered a pleasing combination of rousing overture, lush melodicism and a lively final movement inspired by Neapolitan folk music.

For those keeping score at home, the ovation prompted Muti to come out for what&rsquo;s becoming a standard five bows, and although not enough audience members stood to qualify for the Standing O, during the third bow they did start in with the rhythmic clapping for the only time since the second night in Salzburg.

Instead of making his final exit after his fifth bow, Muti turned to address the audience and began telling them of a great composer about whom they&rsquo;d probably never heard: one Giuseppe Martucci.

Someone in the audience tittered, and Muti said sternly, &ldquo;It is nothing to laugh (at).&rdquo;

Another cackle, perhaps a nervous one, came from the seats, and Muti stood there silently with a look that&hellip;well, let&rsquo;s just say, you don&rsquo;t want a parent or anyone else in authority looking this way at you. Tension hung in the silence. Would he take his baton and leave?

No, he wouldn&rsquo;t. &ldquo;He was a great composer. He was a great conductor,&rdquo; Muti continued, telling of Brahms&rsquo; and Mahler&rsquo;s support of him and of Toscanini and the fascists, all while the audience listened intently.

The encore went over as it should have, frosting on a rich cake, and after three more bows, the evening was done.

***

By the way, the reason the orchestra was playing &ldquo;Aus Italien&rdquo; and not its usual second-night centerpiece, Prokofiev&rsquo;s &ldquo;Suite from &lsquo;Romeo and Juliet&rsquo;&rdquo;&mdash;aside from the Strauss piece being a favorite of Muti&rsquo;s as well as of the Lucerne Festival&rsquo;s head &mdash; was that the Philadelphia Orchestra had preceded the CSO to town and played that Prokofiev work. Such are the complexities of booking a European tour; you not only must come up with workable dates but also must negotiate the repertoire amid many moving parts.As it turned out, when the CSO arrived in Lucerne, its charter jet was being picked up by the Philadelphia Orchestra to fly to its next stop. And the bus that transported the CSO musicians to their hotel had just been used to drive the Philadelphia musicians to the airport.

Given the tight-knitness of this rarified classical musician community, the Chicago and Philadelphia players left little messages for each other to find all over their respective buses and planes. Each party was pleased to find that these scraps of paper hadn&rsquo;t been cleared away before they boarded.

After all, with musicians of this caliber, you don&rsquo;t want to mess with their notes.

<strong>Europe's early reviews of the CSO are mixed</strong>

LUCERNE, Switzerland &mdash;</span> Critics are mostly applauding, though without the stomping or rhythmic clapping, for the first of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's performances on its two-week European tour.

Reviews of the weekend performances in Salzburg, Austria, generally acknowledge the power of the orchestra, particularly the oft-lauded brass section, but some take issue with ways in which that power is directed and music is interpreted by CSO music director Riccardo Muti.

The Vienna-based paper Der Standard praised the lyricism of the Prokofiev, but complained of languorous strings in Paul Hindemith's Symphony in E flat. Salzburger Nachrichten called Muti's take on Richard Strauss' &ldquo;Death and Transfiguration&rdquo; unsophisticated, with the orchestra lacking radiance, but admired the 70-year-old conductor and his orchestra's energy on the Hindemith, and praised the musicians' technical brilliance and large sound.

At the most negative end, the Austrian paper Wiener Zeitung found that the brass section overwhelmed the strings, and it characterized the orchestra's volume as a strategy to win applause. The Viennese paper Die Presse was far more enthusiastic, calling the brass section among the world's finest and marveling at how Muti, in his short tenure as music director, was already drawing such finesse and elegance from the strings.

Sunday, August 28:

LUCERNE, Switzerland — As the final piccolo note died out to signal Romeo and Juliet's tragic end Saturday night, Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti's left hand descended in slow motion amid utter silence in the Salzburg, Austria, concert hall.

When the hand finally reached its resting spot by his side and his body relaxed, the applause began, a wave that rolled in and crashed over the orchestra.

First came the basic clapping and scattered shouts of “Bravo!” As Muti, back for a curtain call, pointed to the soloists one by one so they could take their bows, the cheering grew louder. When he gestured for the entire vaunted brass section to stand, the foot stomping began.

The volume cranked up another notch when the entire orchestra rose and bowed again, and when Muti exited and returned for a third bow, the rhythmic clapping began. Muti stepped away and was urged back for another bow, which he took alongside his musicians down from the podium. With Muti back off stage and the orchestra sitting, the rhythmic clapping continued.The maestro returned for a fifth and final bow, and this time Concertmaster Robert Chen followed him off the stage, with the rest of the musicians in his wake. Enough.

“That was incredible, a really great performance,” Martha Gilmer, the CSO's vice president for artistic planning and audience development, said backstage afterward. “Look at that ovation: stomping, cheering and rhythmic clapping. They really loved them.”

On Sunday the orchestra traveled to Lucerne for two concerts at that scenic Swiss city's music festival, and at the end of the first one Sunday night (in which the orchestra reprised its first-night Salzburg program, again turning in a sublime, supremely confident Shostakovich Symphony No. 5), the audience was at it again, though in a somewhat contrasting way. Again, Muti was brought out for five bows amid close to 10 minutes of sustained applause. Again the crescendos grew as he gave the musicians their turns in the spotlight.

But this time there was no stomping or rhythmic clapping. Instead, the Swiss audience awarded the orchestra a standing ovation.

“It affects the way we play too,” Chen said, praising the European concertgoers for being such music enthusiasts. “We can sense it.”

The audiences' rapt attention has been evident right from the start of all three concerts, with several seconds of pin-drop silence hanging in the air before Muti raised his baton to trigger the opening notes.

Asked when they'd last received such an ovation as the cheering/stomping/rhythmic-clapping trifecta, the musicians, as musicians are wont to do, disagreed. One, who didn't want to be named for fear of offending those conductors who had come in between, said such wild enthusiasm hadn't been heard since the days when Sir Georg Solti was leading the orchestra.

Principal viola player Charles Pikler, a 33-year CSO veteran, had a different view. “I think it's pretty standard what we got tonight,” he said Saturday, though he noted, “I think Salzburg hears so many great orchestras, they're not apt to go bonkers over any of the performers.”

“The orchestra usually gets a pretty rousing ovation overseas,” Chen said in Salzburg, where the CSO hadn't played the festival since 1989 (in contrast to Lucerne, where it played in 2009). “But this was special. We haven't been (in Salzburg) in years, so many years. Everyone was revved up to play here.”

The orchestra demonstrated its great range Saturday, closing out the balcony scene in Sergei Prokofiev's “Suite from ‘Romeo and Juliet'” with tender delicacy and soon turning Tybalt's funeral procession into a muscular, tooth-rattling march. With Paul Hindemith's Symphony in E-flat, which opened Saturday's program, the orchestra got a dynamic, cohesive sound out of a dense score that, due to Muti's illness early this year, it had performed just once previously.

Muti, a Salzburg Festival fixture of 41 years, certainly delivered his share of vigor. Hardly resembling someone who recently turned 70 or required a pacemaker after that scary collapse in February, the conductor looked as if he had a direct line of communication with every musician onstage — and some folks in the audience as well. When someone started coughing during a quiet moment of “Romeo and Juliet,” Muti briefly waved one hand behind his back downward without breaking eye contact with his orchestra.

Before that, during the Hindemith, the conductor went airborne immediately before the final “ba-da-DUMP!”

“The maestro was full of passion,” bassist Steve Lester said outside the Grosses Festspielhaus after Saturday's concert. “He brings a lot of energy and passion to these performances, and you can tell.”

Pikler, who played his first notes with the CSO and Solti on that very same Salzburg stage in 1978, appreciated the line of continuity.

“The performances then were on fire, and the performances now were on fire,” Pikler said. “I think performances with Muti are very con fuoco.”

Muti's lively mood continued backstage as he greeted a receiving line of well-wishers and bravos. He was especially pleased that two members of the Berlin Philharmonic, scheduled to perform later in Salzburg, had come to town a day early to hear Muti conduct the CSO. Some CSO and Berlin horn players wound up grabbing a late dinner together Saturday.

The orchestra doesn't really have time to bask in the applause, though. There's a morning rehearsal Monday, another Lucerne concert Monday night, and then it's off to Luxembourg for first-time-ever CSO concerts there Tuesday and Wednesday. All in all, this stretch has the orchestra playing six straight nights in three different countries.

Still, as starts to a road trip go … not bad.

Saturday: The patrons' rain luxury, Mozart chocolates

SALZBURG, Austria — The Chicago Symphony Orchestra musicians, set to play their second Salzburg concert Saturday night in what will be a stretch of six consecutive-night performances in three different countries, had the morning and afternoon to themselves, but the group of 30-plus CSO patrons here were scheduled for a morning walking tour of historic Salzburg sights, including Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s birth home.

So the temperature dipped about 30 degrees — finally snuffing out that intense heat wave — and it rained.

“Now you get the weather you wished,” the guide in traditional Austrian garb said cheerfully as she led about half of the patrons through the cool drizzle, with everyone wearing their ear thingies so they could hear her singsong narration.

I’ll explore the patrons’ experience more in later dispatches, but suffice it to say that this collection of the CSO’s most dedicated supporters, financially and otherwise, is traveling in style. They’re staying at two of the nicest, most established hotels in town, the Goldener-Hirsch and the Hotel Sacher, they eat well (and not just because the celebratory welcome dinner atop the Hohensalzburg Fortress featured treble-clef pretzels), and they travel in a scenic combination of planes, trains and coaches.

Their Sunday trip to Lucerne, Switzerland, the next CSO tour stop, includes a charter flight to Samedan, Switzerland, followed by, as their official itinerary puts it, “a short, picturesque drive to St. Moritz, where we board the Glacier Express train that follows an historic rail route through some of the most dramatic scenery in the Swiss Alps.” They’ll be shadowing the CSO throughout the tour except that they’re skipping Paris, where the orchestra has one performance, to spend more time in Dresden, Germany.

Back in Salzburg, the patrons wound up their tour with lunch at the K&K Restaurant, over which CSO vice president for artistic planning and audience development Martha Gilmer offered compelling contrasts between the lives of two composers highlighted on this tour, Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev. The meal ended with the inevitable, quite tasty apple strudel.

Afterward, the group was free to do a final damp wander through this excessively charming town before Saturday’s early-morning getaway.

Too bad Mozart can’t do the same; he no doubt would have been fascinated to see how his name and face are selling everything from chocolates (the famous Mozartkugel, filled with pistachio and marzipan—I got mine at Konditorei Furst, which has bragging rights to having created these omnipresent yummy candy balls) and cakes to perfumes, colognes and pretty much anything that might be put on a shelf or wall.

At some point Salzburg should stage a tourist knick-knack smackdown between Mozart and “The Sound of Music.” I’d fly back for that.

What else haven’t I told you?

Oh, I know: Bassist Steve Lester (who chairs the orchestra's membership committee) and his wife, violinist Rachel Goldstein, had a harrowing experience on their off day Wednesday when what was supposed to be a four-hour mountain hike turned into a grueling ordeal with them improvising up an alternative path and winding up stranded overnight at a mountaintop guest house.

Fortunately, they were able to make it back by the next morning’s rehearsal, and by that evening the color had returned to their faces. Lester deemed it an “unanticipated adventure.”

No doubt it won’t be the last one experienced on this tour.

Muti, CSO begin European concerts before excited crowd

Friday, Aug. 26

After two days of rehearsals, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra finally was exposed to the Salzburg Festival audience Friday night, and they took to each other like kindling to oxygen.

The reception to Bernard Rands’ “Danza Petrificada” was enthusiastic for a relatively unknown, modern American work. Richard Strauss’s “Death and Transfiguration,” with its hushed, opening building to a brass-fueled fever dream, earned prolonged applause before the intermission, and Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Symphony No. 5” all but exploded.

“No orchestra can better play this piece,” Ingo Rickl, a member of the Richard Strauss society in Vienna, declared from his seat as the concert concluded. (He thought the CSO’s “Death and Transfiguration” was “a little bit too fine.”)

The Shostakovich is a piece all but designed to showcase the orchestra’s range, from the impossibly delicate moments of the third movement to the hard-charging opening and smashing finale of the fourth. Music director Riccardo Muti took three curtain calls amid the cheering, clapping, stomping and “Bravo”-ing might have lasted longer than the six minutes had he kept coming back.

Muti’s singling out of the soloists also brought enthusiastic ovations, particularly for the wind players. New principal clarinetist Steve Williamson, in his first CSO performance after moving over from the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, didn’t see his first moment in the spotlight coming and needed a nudge before standing up.

“I didn’t know that he was looking at me,” Williamson said backstage afterward. “It was great that the audience was into it, that they were as thrilled with it as I was. It was a wonderful way to start my time with the orchestra.”

Looking spent and serene in his dressing room afterward, Muti was still enjoying the echoes of those cheers. He had taken the Grosses Festspielhaus stage many times, but not with the orchestra whose mantle he recently inherited.

“I think they played fantastically, and in a repertoire that is difficult — three different composers of three different periods, three different styles — and the entire evening the standard was very, very high, and everybody gave their best,” Muti said, noting that the sophisticated Salzburg audiences can be quite cold.

Not on this night.

“I think the orchestra tonight was a great ambassador of Chicago—and the world,” Muti said. “I’m very proud of these musicians.”

Violinist Rachel Goldstein said she thought the orchestra “played very well” but added, “I think we’ll play ever better as this tour goes on because this is the first concert.”

Before the concert the scene outside the festival hall was electric, with concertgoers in formalwear and other fancy garb sipping champagne at kiosks on opposite sides of the street (Moet & Chandon in front of the entrance, Tattinger across the way) while visitors in shorts posed for photos amid the glamour.

The CSO day started with a rehearsal in the Grosses Festspielhaus, giving conductor and musicians a chance to tweak their performances and also, after Thursday’s rehearsal in the cavernous Felsenreitschule, to hear what they sounded like in the auditorium in which they’d be playing. The Grosses is by far the warmer room, with its wood paneling and stage set relatively close to the seats, and the sound of the instruments has a ringing clarity.

Muti, wearing khakis and a pink V-neck sweater, occasionally stepped back from the podium to take the measure of the balance of instruments, asking certain musicians to adjust their volume accordingly. He ditched the previous day’s swivel chair to stand and conduct, as he led the orchestra through Bernard Rands’ “Danza Petrificada” without interruption.

“Was OK?” he asked the CSO officials and guests in the audience after the sweeping finale, a question that might as well have been rhetorical.

For Richard Strauss’ “Death and Transfiguration,” Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Symphony No. 5” and, from Saturday’s program, Paul Hindemith’s “Symphony in E-flat,” the conductor had more detailed notes, stopping and starting to get the moments just so. Muti kept the mood light, as he did Thursday, peppering his commentary with jokes and exaggerated gestures.

Muti ended the practice with a warm speech to the musicians, telling them that the last time he and they toured Europe together, in 2007, he was their guest, but this time he was with them. He told them they may not be able to see all of his excitement, but it was there — he patted his chest — in his heart.

“I needed a few seconds to absorb the new group,” the CSO music director said with a smile during a break. “I was very happy to see my musicians.”

Less than 12 hours earlier, Muti was conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in Verdi’s 3 3/4-hour opera “Macbeth” before a sold-out Salzburg Festival audience. Now the 70-year-old maestro would get to work with his orchestra, with whom he’ll be presenting concerts here and in five other cities over the next two weeks.

Orchestra rehearsals usually are private affairs, but Muti and the CSO musicians’ representatives allowed a few journalists, including Tribune classical music critic John von Rhein and myself plus representatives of some European outlets, to watch and listen as the music director oversaw morning and afternoon run-throughs of the programs to be performed here Friday and Saturday nights

Anyone who has seen the charismatic Muti with a microphone rather than a baton can attest that he knows how to work an audience. On Thursday he had multiple audiences: those of us in the seats of the cavernous Felsenreitschule and by far the more important one sharing the stage with him.

The musicians’ oft-stated affection for their newish music director may stem in part from his being such a positive presence at the podium even when trying to fine-tune a performance. (This is something that was told to me before I got to check it out Thursday.)

He’s an old-school score studier with very specific ideas of how a piece should sound, yet he doesn’t criticize musicians or convey disappointment, at least in front of the orchestra. Instead he’ll sing a melody line, wave his hands and arms and communicate with facial expressions and words what mood he’s seeking and how he’d like them to get there

One instruction went like this: “We have to go to the nose against the wall: Ya ta ta ta ta ta boom pop!”

“He’s such a warm, inviting human being,” Stephen Williamson, playing with the orchestra for the first time as its newly appointed principal clarinetist, said during a break. “He’s very serious about what he wants, but he knows how to keep it jovial.”

He kept his jet-lagged musicians loose with smiles and jokes, and after he communicated one bit of critical feedback, which was pretty much inaudible from the seats, he added loudly, “Still, you’re playing very well,” and, swiveling his chair toward the audience, instructed, “Mr. Caro, write down.

Done.

Later he made a show of glancing at us again, then whispering some instructions to the musicians, then turning back to us and asking, “Clear?” (A musician fessed up later that Muti was hearing some sounds he didn’t like from instruments after they’d been played.)

But most of what he did was conduct. Because the rehearsal was in the Felsenreitschule, best known as where the Von Trapps sing at the end of “The Sound of Music,” and not Grosses Festspielhaus, where the weekend performances actually will take place, Muti declared that this would be a relatively tranquil run-through, with more specific work to come at Friday’s rehearsal in the actual concert hall.

“I’ve never played in a cave before,” Concertmaster Robert Chen quipped during a break in reference to the Felsenreitschule’s stone walls and high ceiling. (It’s built into the side of a mountain.)

First up was Richard Strauss’ “Death and Transfiguration,” a musically and thematically sweeping vision of a man on his deathbed. As the piece grew more rousing, Muti, in a blue-striped Oxford shirt, lowered one leg off his swivel chair and then the other as he stepped and gesticulated vigorously as if leading a march. At the end of the performance, he asked for a towel, which he draped around his neck for much of the morning as if it were an ascot.

Next was Bernard Rands’ “Danza Petrificada,” a Mexican-inspired piece by an English-born composer that the CSO gave its world premiere last year, and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5.

“Bravissima. Grazie,” Muti told the orchestra when the latter was over.

After lunch came work on the two pieces slated for Saturday night’s performance: Paul Hindemith’s Symphony in E-flat and Prokofiev’s “Suite from ‘Romeo and Juliet,’” the latter of which had Muti and the orchestra trying to find the exact balance between romantic and natural.

This had been a long day for the conductor and musicians, but they had one more stop: a reception room in the festival complex where the CSO and its traveling patrons would toast the maestro’s 70th birthday, which took place July 28.

Referring to the conductor’s several notable performances this summer at the Salzburg Festival, where Muti has appeared regularly for 41 years, festival president Helga Rabl-Stadler said, “Without exaggeration, we can say Riccardo Muti rules this summer. He is the emperor of this year. He is the musical soul of this year.”

After being serenaded by CSO brass musicians playing a fanfare inspired by the letters of his name, Muti eulogized a Vienna Philharmonic cellist who’d died days earlier and whose wife wrote to Muti about the musician’s tearful concern when the Chicago conductor took a fall early this year.

“This is the most important thing a conductor can get from musicians: the human connection,” Muti said, pledging to continue seeking more of the same.

He also decried the tendency of some to turn everything into a competition. Just because the CSO would be performing at the Salzburg Festival between the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics didn’t mean they were all in competition.

“This is one of the problems of the world: ‘Who is better?’ We don’t need to show anything,” he said, though he couldn’t help but add, “because we are."

The thing is, 90 degrees here isn’t the same as 90 degrees in Chicago, because Salzburg air conditioners apparently aren’t equipped to take the heat. Everyone’s walking around with their shirts stuck to their chests. The hall hosting Ma’s robust recital might as well have been a steam bath, and after three encores, the man was a puddle.

Afterward, CSO Association President Deborah Rutter led a few of us backstage to greet Ma, and here’s something you should know about the ever-friendly cellist: He’s a hugger.

SALZBURG, Austria — While Chicago Symphony Orchestra musicians enjoyed their sole no-strings-attached day off for the next two weeks on Wednesday, the loud rumble of wheels against stone floors signaled the invasion of their army's worth of gear.

“I'm in a rat maze right now,” CSO stage manager Kelly Kerins said as he directed traffic among dozens of wardrobe trunks, instrument cases and other big boxes being rolled into the basement hallways beneath the Felsenreitschule, the auditorium where the orchestra would be rehearsing Thursday (and where the Von Trapp family performs at the end of “The Sound of Music” before fleeing) before its performances Friday and Saturday nights in the adjacent Grosses Festspielhaus.

Kerins didn't make his declaration in exasperation. Rather this was business as usual when the CSO's stuff arrives at a venue, particularly one as busy as the complex that's constantly shuttling in orchestras and other performers during the prestigious summer Salzburg Festival.

Two large trucks backed up gingerly one at a time over the venue's cobblestone driveway — just barely fitting under a small overpass — while Kerins and Heidi Lukas, the CSO's director of operations, tried to get a sense of where everything would go. Ideally the wardrobes, instruments, podiums, cases of sheet music and other items would be parked where they could remain throughout the orchestra's stay, but with an opera and other organizations’ materials already in place, some makeshift planning was in order.

An additional complicating factor was that with the CSO and music director Riccardo Muti rehearsing in a different space than where it will be performing, decisions had to be made regarding, for instance, where the heaviest instruments could be placed with minimal subsequent moving around.

“It's what I expected,” Lukas said. “Everywhere we go we have to adapt to our surroundings and figure it out, and that's what we're doing.”

On this day only one of the three dressing rooms assigned to the CSO was immediately available, so Kerins asked workers from the complex whether they could remove all chairs and tables from the room so as much stuff as possible could be crammed in there. That would turn out to be the men's dressing room, although some of the men’s wardrobe trunks would line both sides of the hallway while the women's trunks were destined, eventually, for the other two dressing rooms.

“It's better to put the men in the hallway because they don't care,” Kerins said.

Soon the heavy trunks came rolling off the truck, bottlenecking outside the entrance and rolling down the hallways, all while Kerins, Lukas and other CSO stage hands tried to make sure everything wound up in a relatively logical place.

“It's hard,” Lukas said, “but everybody knows this is a condition of the road.”

Meanwhile, many orchestra members took advantage of their free day to explore this scenic town, with its baroque architecture, Alps backdrop and unseasonably high temperatures near 90. The two harpists, whose large instruments were among the cargo and thus inaccessible for practicing, spent Wednesday morning shopping in town. Another group of musicians took the popular “'Sound of Music' Tour,” while still others enjoyed a leisurely lunch at one of Salzburg's many quaint cafes before taking a funicular up to the Festung Hohensalzburg, the fortress that overlooks the town.

Stephen Williamson decided instead to return to his hotel after lunch to practice because, as the orchestra's new principal clarinetist (being announced officially on Thursday), he had a lot of material to master.

“I have not played with the orchestra yet,” said Williamson, who came from the same position at the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York. “This is my first time.”

Lora Schaefer, the CSO’s second oboist, did venture up to the fortress, though later in the afternoon she planned on getting her instrument’s reeds in shape, a tricky proposition when the orchestra will be playing in so many venues the same day in which they traveled there.

“It's the fast-paced flying in and playing, so we won't have as much time to adjust our reeds,” she said, standing by a cannon pointed out over the city. She explained that reeds are climate sensitive, so she has to have many on hand to ensure that she’s concert-ready. She brought about 100 reeds with her on tour, some finished, some of which still need to be scraped with a blade into playing shape, and she hoped to line up 10 usable ones before the day was over.

Dennis Michel, second bassoonist and a CSO member since 1998, agreed that with two rehearsals Thursday and then travel and/or performances scheduled for every day beginning Friday, this 10-concert tour will move at a particularly quick clip.

“It's a little bit busier than some of them we have done,” he said, though he shared a common sense of excitement among the players about touring Europe with Muti for the first time since he became music director. “It's a totally different dynamic. This is where the general public will see the marriage between Muti and the orchestra, see where it's going.”

Trumpet player John Hagstrom made use of the orchestra hotel’s designated practice space Tuesday night and spent much of Wednesday in his room working on a CD/DVD project, but by late afternoon he was ready to venture out.

“Now I'm going to go and buy a pair of shorts,” he said, “because I didn't realize it was going to be this hot.”

Most of the musicians and CSO staffers on the orchestra’s two-plus-weeks European tour landed Tuesday morning in Munich and boarded three buses for the 2 1/2-hour bus ride to this scenic Austrian city, where the temperature is in the upper 80s. But the air conditioning in one of the buses fritzed out, causing all three vehicles to pull over so just about everyone could board the two cooler buses while a few stragglers sweated it out in the third one.

Also hot: tickets for the orchestra’s first appearances in more than 20 years at the renowned Salzburg Festival. Riccardo Muti, leading the orchestra on tour for the first time since becoming music director, will conduct concerts Friday and Saturday after a double-rehearsal day on Thursday.

First things first, though: Tons of instruments, wardrobes and other gear, which were transferred to trucks in Frankfurt Tuesday, will have to be unloaded Wednesday at the festival hall.

Follow the CSO, led by Riccardo Muti, as they visit and perform in Europe. Tribune reporter Mark Caro is with the musicians and will file daily reports here and in the A+E section.

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